Users now have the ability to upload any Helioviewer.org produced videos directly from Helioviewer.org to YouTube. Users can also share these uploaded videos directly with other users of Helioviewer.org. If you take a look at the Helioviewer.org website you will notice a new video section on the bottom-right corner of the page. All of the videos that are linked to there were created by users on Helioviewer.org and uploaded to YouTube.

Figure 1: Recently uploaded videos appear on the right

For a while now users have had to option to download any of the videos they create, but because some videos can be quite large (e.g. 50Mb) this isn’t always convenient when you want to share the video with someone else. This is where YouTube steps in. After your video has been created, you can download it to your local computer and also upload it to YouTube from Helioviewer.org. This makes it easy for users to quickly share their creations in a way that people are already familiar with. Furthermore, by checking the “Share my video with other Helioviewer.org users” box in the upload form, your video will show up in the “Recent Uploads” section at the bottom-right corner of the screen. It may take a little while before your video shows up (this is due to the way YouTube indexes uploaded videos and may take up to a couple hours on a busy day) on the website so if it doesn’t seem to be showing up, don’t despair! Check back later and it should be there.

Figure 2: Video player dialog showing the new YouTube upload button

To upload your own video to YouTube, begin by creating a video using the “video” button at the top-right corner of the screen. Once your video has finished processing and Helioviewer.org has notified you that your video is ready to be viewed, click the link provided to show your video in the in-browser player. At the bottom of the player you’ll see two buttons: a download button (which downloads a high-quality version of the video you are viewing) and an upload button with a YouTube icon next to it. Click the upload button. If this is the first time you are uploading a video (or if you have either closed your browser or waited more than 24 hours since your last upload) you will need to authorize Helioviewer.org to upload videos on your behalf. To do this, you will need to sign in to your Google/YouTube account, and then click the “Authorize” button. Afterwards you will be redirected to a simple form where you can choose a title, tags, and description for the video, and also specify whether or not you want your video to appear on Helioviewer.org. When you are finished filling out the form, hit submit and you are done! The video should show up on your YouTube account within a couple minutes, and if you chose to share your video on Helioviewer.org, it should show up there a little later.

This is a really new feature and you will probably see it change some over time as we continue to refine the interface and make it easier to work with. If you have any suggestions though, please let us know! We want to make a tool that is both easy and fun to use.